Marc Myers writes daily on jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings

December 08, 2010

Kenton Declares Jazz Is Finished

Six months before Stan Kenton recorded Kenton Plays Wagner, the bandleader let jazz have it in an April 1964 Down Beat article. Like the January 1964 Granz interview that I posted yesterday, Kenton blamed jazz's woes on folk—a rather quaint scapegoat of choice among one-time jazz powers.

Folk surged in popularity in the 1950s but never quite caught on with teens. Closely associated with the struggles of labor movements of the '30s, groups like The Weavers, the Kingston Trio and the Limeliters in the '50s revived stories of worker injustice and exploitation accompanied by passionate singing, tight harmony and acoustic guitar-playing. Not until July 1963, with the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, did folk finally connect with the youth market and reach a critical mass. Led by the hit Blowin' in the Wind, Dylan's album repositioned folk as poetic and personal—not overtly political or aged.

By the date of Kenton's comments in the spring of 1964, the Beatles had arrived—though one could argue that Kenton and other uninitiated listeners dismissed them initially as folk or worse. Or, despite the mobs of screaming teenage girls and wild record sales, they considered the Beatles to be just a momentary fad.

As noted yesterday, the "jazz is dead" thing has been around since the early '60s. What's new here is its assassin—folk, which for a brief moment was a stand-in for "thinking kids." Without further ado, here is the Down Beat article in full from April 1964, with the headline: "Kenton Declares Jazz Is Finished":

"Stan Kenton, whose colorful career in jazz has been marked by many a controversy, proved recently he has lost none of his flair for the dramatic.

" 'Jazz is finished,' the 52-year-old orchestra leader and composer declared at the concluding session of a special series of panel discussions titled the Recording Arts, held at the University of California at Los Angeles under the auspices of the university and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

"On a panel that consisted of composer-jazzman Benny Carter, [folk] singer Salli Terri, and Lou Gottlieb of the Limeliters, Kenton was not alone in noting 'the enormous amount of bigotry' existing between factions within jazz and folk music. Each panel member concurred.

"In a black mood, Kenton stated he finds it 'impossible' to discuss jazz generally without offending some 'cult.' In any case, he added, he feels that jazz has lost much of its audience to folk music.

"Jazz is, at present, he went on, a highly speculative art for a [small] audience, while folk music can hit a broader audience because of its relatively less sophisticated musical content.

"In a flurry of opinion-tossing back and forth across the panel, Gottlieb [pictured], a jazz afficionado, addressed himself to Kenton, declaring that today one must think, not dance, while listening to modern jazz. It was his feeling, he went on, that the extensive listening experience required by today's jazz fan means that the musically unsophisticated audiences are lost, left out, and therefore have little attraction to jazz.

"Kenton agreed. He averred, though, that the reason for the audience-alienating music of many contemporary jazz musicians is a personal search for an individual identity in their music.

"Gottlieb was ready for that one. He complained that this search for identity often took place on the performance platform.

" 'I'd much rather,' he snapped, 'have this searching happen offstage—and then hear the fruits of it onstage.'

"At this point Kenton tossed his jazz-is-finished grenade into the collective lap of panel and audience.

"Amid a stunned silence, Kenton went on to reveal he had come to this conclusion some three years ago. He was now publicly expressing it for the first time, he added.

"The jazz we have known, explained Kenton, from 1890 to the late 1950s, has spent itself and has become absorbed by American music in general.

" 'Jazz stars,' he predicted, 'will simply not rise as they have in the past. We've seen our last Ellington. There are no more contributions to make.'

"But Carter was of a different turn of mind. Jazz, Carter told Kenton, is much too small a word for everything that is happening in music today. Kenton remained unconvinced.

"Today's audience, responded Kenton to a question from the floor, 'are hung up between what they really like in music and what they think they should like.' He attempted to illustrate his point: the album in which the Kenton band backed Tex Ritter, the cowboy singer, was a commercial failure, he said, mostly because people felt both performers suffered from the combination.

"In a last hurrah, Kenton threw in the often-heard quote on what jazz is: 'If you have to ask, don't mess with it.'

I find this entire folk-as-jazz-killer thing a hoot. Who knew?

Kenton, of course, seems to use it merely as a foil to blast alternative forms of jazz, which by 1964 was reflecting the struggles of the civil rights movement. And then there is Lou Gottlieb's odd remark about not being able to dance to jazz—what exactly were folk fans doing while the Limeliters played?

The months between the release of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and The Beatles Second Album were interesting ones indeed.

JazzWax note: So who was Salli Terri? She was a folk singer of some repute in the '50s and '60s who recorded with Laurindo Almeida among others [both pictured]. She died in 1996. Go here.

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Given the coroner's notice many times, both Jazz and the Theatre refuse to give up the ghost. The naysayers abound, yet real art survives, and the truth somehow manages to slip through the cracks. Mr. Kenton's Prophecies of Doom could be as bombastic as his arrangements but they make for nice reading half a century out.

This is same Kenton who stated in an interview around the time that black musicians were taking up all the good jobs in jazz (or something to that effect). The ghost of Kenton should give thanks that he recorded with Capitol, as his reissues have been judiciously handled by the Blue Note/EMI reissue program focusing on his strengths and leaving his junk in the vaults. I think Kenton probably has a better rep now than when he was alive.

Kenton's comments are odd because many fans accused his 50s era music, with its highbrow pretensions, of "killing jazz". However, it is often forgotten that Kenton's music was posited as the adult opposition to rock and roll in the film "Blackboard Jungle". In an early secene, when Glen Ford meets another teacher in a bar, they start talking about muisc and discover they are both Kenton fans. The other teacher (who will later get all his precious 78s smashed by the hoods of North Manual High in a scene that still pains me to watch) proclaims "Stan the Man!" They are also in the only inner city bar that has Kenton on its jukebox. Later in the film, Bill Russo's "Invention for trumpet & Guitar" is also heard on the soundtrack.

Poor Stan. When he made is "Jazz is Dead" remarks in 64 little did he know that within a few years he finish out his career playing sets of rock tunes at ear-splitting levels at high schools and colleges and issuing albums with titles like "6.1 on the Richter Scale!". Too bad his will forbade a ghost band, as it would be nice to hear a modern ensemble do up "City of Glass" or stuff from his innovations period.

You know, at the same time Stan was telling everyone that jazz was dead, I was a teenager taking the bus out to Villanova University's Intercollegiate Jazz Festival, at which Kenton was a "featured" judge. Either Stan didn't like what he heard, or the pub was too much for him to turn down. Sad either way.

Great posting as always. Quick note on Salli Terri - she was much more than just a folk singer. Salli Terri was a classically-trained, highly-versatile artist, with an amazing voice, who made a number of fabulous recordings. Most famous is "Duets with the Spanish Guitar," with Laurindo Almeida, which can still be obtained on CD from Arkiv Music. Terri made a number of excellent folk song records (some with Almeida), was a professor of music, did voice-overs for Disney, and even did the vocals for one of the classics of Lounge music, Robert Drasnin's "Voodoo!"

Marc;
Stan was an intense advocate of his brand of symphonic jazz and at the same time was a man of his time in terms of resisting newer, more obtuse forms of jazz. I take issue with Joel in that while Kenton's later work was influenced by modern music, it was unmistakably 'Stan' in volume, voicings and rhythm. His early popular hits were more commercial than the rock influenced tunes of the '70s.

Too bad that Capitol demanded product associated with current pop trends like 'Hair'(the selection of album covers displayed are the ones I never play, though the Wagner one is kind of interesting). But let's face it, even Sinatra and Miles have some schlock in their discographies.

And BTW, there are occasional opportunities to hear live Kenton arrangements thanks to the Stan Kenton Alumni Band, the Capitol Bones Big Band in DC and the Los Angeles Jazz Institute. You may have to wait awhile for those groups to showcase City of Glass again though.

Some of Kenton's music (he had an enormous recorded output) was bombastic and forgettable, but much was good and some was excellent. (For starters, "Contemporary Concepts" is a must-own album.)

Kenton had some genuinely great bands, and he gave a vital boost to some important composer-arrangers (Pete Rugolo, Bob Graettinger, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Russo, Bill Holman, Lennie Niehaus, others). He, like Ellington, was a master showman and self-promoter. And he was one of the pioneers of the jazz-education movement.

Once at the Berlin Jazz Festival, Thelonious Monk overheard a musician putting Kenton down. Monk turned to the man and said, "What have you done, compared to what he's done?" As usual, Monk got to the heart of the matter.

About

Marc Myers writes on music and the arts for The Wall Street Journal. He is author of "Why Jazz Happened" (Univ. of California Press). Founded in 2007, JazzWax is a Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year" winner.